


cats are grey

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Snippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5864815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel





	cats are grey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AJHall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/gifts).



“Somewhere,” Eowyn said when they had retired to their chambers and Aragorn had set a chest of drawers against the door, against any casual intrusion, and promptly seated himself on it, “one of the Valar is laughing.”

“We are given what we desire,” Aragorn agreed, “but oft in perilous ways.”

“I do not desire to be Queen in Gondor,” Eowyn retorted, and stamped her foot. The day had been long and full of trouble and with him these long years later she felt in herself enough to enact the child. A strange thing after all her girlhood spent enacting the woman grown.

“They did not use the word for queen,” he said, infuriatingly calm, and if she read right the twitch of his lip beneath his beard, amused beyond any sense. “The Harad take many wives, and to them it must only be right that a King ought have his pick. Your reputation works against you, shieldmaiden.”

He was determined to be no help at all. Eowyn turned on her heel, muttering imprecations against all men, and particularly against the men of Gondor, for of a certainty Faramir too would have been perilously amused to be in this situation, and teased her half to tears. They were all alike in their lordly detachment. With anyone but Aragorn she would gladly have played out her part in the unwitting deception, even unto the lords of Dol Amroth who were close kin to her husband. Yet there was fragile peace at stake, and in the many palaces of the Harad the nawabzadis dwelt proudly separate and spoke their minds in council and listened to no man not of their own kin. All day she had been drinking flower wine with women whose hennaed hands had the calluses of a lifetime’s archery, and of a lifetime’s handling of the sharp ankush that controlled their war oliphaunts, whose kohled eyes bespoke a lifetime of speaking strategy and being heard. Beyond anything she had known in Rohan or in Gondor this was a glimpse of the life to which she had been yearning: of Numenor there were tales and in the White City relics, but here it lived and breathed. She had met Aragorn before dinner and told him she would be his envoy to the Harad did Faramir like it or not, and he had laughed like a ringing bell, and taken her hand and kissed it, and they had gone in perfect amity to take their seats: he among the princes, she among the perfumed women beyond an open archway that gestured towards a separation of space. For all the world she would not insult them.

The smile had fallen off Aragorn’s face by the time she turned to him. “For all the world I would not harm you,” he said, careful as with an affrighted horse. “I will go and speak to the Nawab and his daughters will draw you into the harem and you will live there untouched till our attendants might find us, and then they will find you other apartments. Come, Eowyn, I could not bear were you afraid of me. It would be a cut as great as Sauron yet living.”

“I have lain a handsbreath from you in a camp of soldiers and in a hall of drunkards in my girlhood, my lord, and felt as safe as in my home, and safer yet. And this week past, hunting for the Nawab’s summer court, I have done it again in pavilion and tent and bare ground. I would go to the ends of the earth for love of you, and regret nothing.” She took his hand and kissed the Ring of Barahir, smiled when he raised it to her face and tucked her loose hair back into an encircling braid.

“Eowyn,” he said, “my White Lady. Like a frozen flame in the golden halls of Meduseld you were when first I saw you, and now you are living flame in the palaces of the White City and a blooming garden in the gardens of Ithilien. Little wonder they think you a queen here.”

“The word they used was not the one for queen,” she reminded him, and waited a beat, and then another for him to roar with laughter.

Bright with humour it was easier to retire. The grand bed could have slept five, and they were practiced at the careful immodesty of a soldier’s life, and easy with each other’s bodies. She had played page to her brother all her childhood, and to Theodred now a hill of flowers, but he needed little help, stripping out of his ceremonial breastplate and unstrapping weapons and shedding holsters, greaves, vambraces as easy as any horse-lord. The many knots of the sash that been presented on him in the morning gave him trouble, and his hand on her hair as she knelt to ease it off him felt a quiet benediction. Few trained maids could have superseded the ease with which he unhooked her brooches and unbraided her hair and pulled the shining mass of it into a single severe plait hanging down her back, but Arwen had hair as thick as she, and longer, and all knew as she had seen, that Gondor’s rulers were curiously ill at ease around servants, preferring to press friends into service when ill or incapable of seeing to themselves or each other.

Even up in the mountains the land of the Harad was warmer than autumn in Edoras, and no fires burnt in the stone grates. Stripped of her outer robe Eowyn felt the air cold against her bare arms and throat, and the warmth trapped under the covers of the bed was a welcome relief. The lamps would burn themselves out or burn all night: she cared not. To be in the dark, in a bed with Aragorn was a thought weighted with creeping dread. The years had not changed her love of him, she had only learnt it better. Always she had loved him with a oldier’s desperate longing for the captain gilded with valour and splendid with scars, and given herself over to be his subject with a glad heart: untrammeled by all the bonds that knotted a man to a woman he was all things to her in being none, brother and father and beloved hero. In the dark he would have been a handsome man watching her with quiet grey eyes.


End file.
